Entries tagged with made of win

I was so busy last weekend that a story reveals post, let alone a pre-reveals gift-shaking squee post, totally slipped my mind! I went out as a pinch hit not once but twice, and am thus twice as grateful to whichever amazing pinch-hitter managed to write me my lovely, lovely gift:

Also known as "everything I couldn't possibly have hoped for when I decided to request Jyn/Leia and Jyn & Leia". :D Starts with AUing away the ending of Rogue One (YAY WOO :D) to allow Jyn and Leia to sort-of meet, and then progresses through missing scenes all the way up to, as the tags indicate, TFA-era. I can't even describe how satisfying I found the idea of Jyn and Leia supporting each other through everything; obviously there's a LOT of bittersweetness, given canon, but it was so lovely and sweet and, like, profoundly soothing to me to think of the two of them being able to be friends and a little bit in love and there for each other. ♥ SO YES. Wonderful gift, fun exchange, A++ would temporarily punt aside other responsibilities to participate again. :D

I have by no means made it through the collection; I've been reading here and there when I have time and am hoping to actually sit down and leave some comments tonight and tomorrow. BUT there's a great spread of fandoms (Babylon 5! Pride & Prejudice! Eureka! Miss Fisher! Wynonna Earp!) and also some awesome original works (tennis players in love! A trickster god and the god of death!), and I'm so delighted. :D

How is it the 27th already? What? WHERE HAS THE TIME GONE. (Just kidding, I know the answer: it was sucked down a rabbit hole of Star Wars. We went to see Rogue One on Christmas Eve, came home and watched ANH, and then decided to go in flashback order. Which means ESB and AotC on Christmas Day, and then RotS, RotJ, and TFA yesterday. And I'm glad we ended on Carrie Fisher's return to Star Wars, as a way to say goodbye. ♥)

November was all NANO NANO NANO, and now we've flopped into December and I've swapped to YULETIDE YULETIDE YULETIDE. :D :D :D

I'm THISCLOSE to completing my totally amazing assignment, woooooo, which will hopefully make me feel less guilty about somehow already having TWO GIFTS??? One Madness, one main collection, and tentative present-shaking indicates I am YET AGAIN going to have an amazing Yuletide.

I CAN ONLY HOPE MY RECIP WILL FEEL THE SAME WAY /o\

But as my brain's being eaten by bears, I haven't had much left for actual canon consumption lately. I've been hugely enjoying Lucifer and Elementary; tentatively still watching Blindspot, though it's starting to feel a little bit like the wheels are coming off; and mostly just mocking Timeless, which is trying a lot of things but IMO isn't really succeeding at them. (I wouldn't really care how bad the episode plots were if I loved the characters, but that show is seriously not managing to convince me that its main characters are a team or even friends. I WANT TO BELIEVE. THIS IS NOT A HARD SELL. And yet.)

WHAT AN ECSTATICALLY WONDERFUL YEAR. I'll be going through the archive properly this afternoon and tomorrow, with Christmas and family and STAR WARS having taken up basically all my time off so far, but I have absolutely made time to read my gifts! MY GIFTS.

Serendipity (25771 words)Fandom:Dune - All Media TypesRating: Teen And Up AudiencesWarnings: Graphic Depictions Of ViolenceRelationships: Chani/Irulan CorrinoCharacters: Irulan Corrino, Chani, Lady Jessica, Leto Atreides IAdditional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, A certain amount of politicking, A certain amount of stabbing, Paul Atreides and the planet Dune will hardly be appearing in this ficSummary: Duke Leto survives his arrival on Arrakis, allies with the Fremen and forces a compromise with the Padishah Emperor. Five years later, Irulan - still unmarried - is summoned from her near exile on Dune as Imperial Observer to testify before the High Council of the Landsraad. Naturally, not all is as it seems. But the actions of the right woman in the right place at the right time can make all the difference.

This is an absolutely EPIC Irulan/Chani AU with completely accurate tags. The central premise is actually kind of fantastically tropey, Chani as Irulan's grudging bodyguard and then they slowly get to know each other and it's not so grudging and also bodyguard if-you-know-what-I-mean; but it is executed with such care and such Dunelike awareness of all the ripples and complexities and consequences. Just lovely!

This fic! This fic is absolutely everything I could never have hoped to receive based on the completely useless "or give me HB/John/Liz, if you want!" prompt I chucked into my letter. I love the Liz voice, I love the understated triangle of pining and caring and TEAM, I love the resolution. I JUST LOVE THIS WHOLE THING.

I'm much less at peace with the probable cancellation of ( Battle Creek. )

I think that's just about everything we're watching on TV right now (except The Flash, but I never have much to say about The Flash. Or Elementary, but for the opposite reason). Which means I can move on to the reason I was actually prompted to make this post: ( we went to see Mad Max yesterday evening. Spoilers, obvs. )

And now I should actually do some work! (Oh, and I suppose I should say: outlines for Book Three of ItO now perhaps three-quarters wrangled, and I'm about 5k into Chapter 1. God knows how long it'll be, but I'm working on it.)

Hallucinate In High Fidelity (4160 words) by geckoholicFandom:Constantine (TV)Rating: Teen And Up AudiencesWarnings: Graphic Depictions Of ViolenceCharacters: Mary "Zed" Martin, John Constantine, Chas ChandlerAdditional Tags: caseficSummary: A call from one of John's old friends leads the gang to London. There's something askew in the city's haunted old train stations.

... which is a charming Zed-focused casefic with bonus Hellblazer tie-in. Very much like an episode, minus all the things the TV show sometimes does wrong—aka EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED. Just enough John and Chas for my taste, and so much of Zed being Zed, holding back and reaching out at the same time, knowing too much and yet not enough until the pieces of the case finally come together. Lovely, in other words, and I'm so grateful!

Happy 2015, to everybody celebrating a new year today! I don't know that I even can characterize my 2014 meaningfully, but it held multiple milestones for me personally, good and bad, and I hope I never forget to acknowledge and remember and recognize them—I hope I learned enough from them to make 2015 awesome.

My year in review in fannish terms mostly consists of KATARA KORRA KATARA KORRA KATARA KORRA YULETIDE. \o? Finishing LttE (AT LAST) was a tremendous feeling; the ending of Korra was everything I could reasonably have hoped for. And of course Yuletide reveals were last night!

I wrote four stories this year, in all. My assignment was not in any way what I was expecting to write:

one giant leap (3862 words) by DamkiannaFandom:The Dig (Video Game)Rating: General AudiencesWarnings: No Archive Warnings ApplyRelationships: Maggie Robbins/Boston LowCharacters: Maggie Robbins, Ludger Brink, Boston LowAdditional Tags: Post-CanonSummary: Two of the Cocytans come with them back to Earth. Post-game tag: after the adventure, they still have to get home. (Gen, with hints of Maggie/Boston.)

I didn't actually offer The Dig this year, but Three_Headed_Monkey asked for it; it was listed ahead of the fandom we actually matched on in my assignment email, and I saw it and HAD TO. There was zero Dig fic on the AO3 until I posted this (and as of this writing, there's two and Three_Headed_Monkey wrote the other), which makes it a Yuletide fandom if ever there was one. It was hilarious and strange and fascinating to watch an LP of The Dig after all this time (it came out in like 1995, that's TWENTY YEARS AGO)—the request was very open-ended but an idea came to me pretty quickly, and the actual writing went very well, so this was a real delight of an assignment overall. \o/ YAY YULETIDE.

And! damask_and_dark was the author of the transcendent and beautiful the moon a black hole in the blaze of night, which was my absolutely incredible main gift and everything I could not have known to hope for when I prompted for armored Snow White at the head of an army, breaking Ravenna out of her box. Gloriously in-character and yet so very kind to both Ravenna and Snow White, with the happy ending the movie couldn't have given Ravenna. ♥

As if that weren't enough to make my Yuletide all by itself, I also received the delightful post-B13:U Blood on the Dance Floor from gamerfic, who took my admittedly off-the-wall request for Lola/Tao (they don't even meet in canon!) and went MARVELOUS places with it! HOW AM I SO LUCKY. \o/

And look at that: it's next week already! Rarewomen stories were revealed on Sunday - idriya and I were at our parents' for most of the day, as our Mother's Day arrangements involved helping our mother out with a variety of gardening tasks. So I haven't really had the chance to dig in; but I did have enough time to read my gift!

Push Back (1146 words) by havocthecatFandom:Push (2009)Rating: General AudiencesWarnings: No Archive Warnings ApplyRelationships: Nick Gant/Kira HudsonCharacters: Kira Hudson, Emily Hu, Cassie Holmes, Nick GantAdditional Tags: POV First Person, Female Character of Color, Canonical Character Death, Women Being Awesome, Background Pairing, Background Het, Canon Het RelationshipSummary: Kira and Emily are supposed to meet up with Nick and Cassie, but when they don't show, Kira and Emily have to find out what happened to them.

I had guessed through present-shaking that I'd been lucky enough to get a Push story, but not that havocthecat was my author! Obviously I wish this had been at least 15k longer, but it's an absolutely wonderful post-movie story about Kira and Emily reconnecting and saving Nick and Cassie from Division, and I LOVE IT. KIRA. EMILY. KIRA. Rarewomen is just the best thing ever.

And of course I also wrote a story:

Lost and Found (9503 words) by DamkiannaFandom:JustifiedRating: Teen And Up AudiencesWarnings: No Archive Warnings ApplyRelationships: Rachel Brooks/Tim GuttersonCharacters: Rachel Brooks, Tim Gutterson, Raylan Givens, Art Mullen, Original CharactersAdditional Tags: Case Fic, Communication FailureSummary: Rachel is late. Rachel's side of a casefic, Rachel/Tim; no spoilers for Season 5. Canon-typical profanity, some violence (not graphic).

For the stupendous and gratifyingly effusive kalisgirl/kalisgirl, who asked for Rachel with a side of Rachel/Tim. I added Justified to my offers this year at the very last minute, seeing that it was a needy fandom and feeling guilty - because I do know the show, even though the idea of writing fic for it kind of terrified me. And then, of course, I matched on it! Which should by all rights have been a disaster, because the kinds of stories that show tells aren't anywhere near my usual wheelhouse; but despite all my anxieties, I had a wonderful time writing this (and rewatching episodes of Justified while I was at it).

I probably won't have enough free time to put together a recs post until at least this weekend, and probably everybody will already have devoured all the stories by then; but I have the fandom categories for Babylon 5 and Stargate and SHIELD and TNG open in tabs, and I am so excited.

Home (1465 words) by AnonymousChapters: 4/4Fandom:Banlieue 13 (Movies)Rating: Teen And Up AudiencesWarnings: No Archive Warnings ApplyRelationships: Leïto/Damien TomasoCharacters: Lola (Banlieue 13), Leïto (Banlieue 13), Damien TomasoAdditional Tags: Post-Movie(s), Addiction, Friendship, FamilySummary: Lola has never been a victim, she has always been a survivor.

My main gift, and I ADORE it - somehow it manages to span the space between the movies, B13:U, and then after B13:U in 1400 words, and it is LOLA and LEÏTO and DAMIEN and HELP I LOVE THEM ALL SO MUCH. Lola and Leïto struggle with Lola's addiction and get a little help from Damien, and then B13:U happens. And the fourth chapter is only three sentences long but it's ONE OF THE BEST THINGS I'VE EVER SEEN. ♥ Anon, whoever you are, this is everything I asked for and you should feel AMAZING.

One of the two marvelous treats that people chose to write for me even though they didn't have to because Yuletide is just beautiful that way. :D Short but totally perfect, a fantastic achy look at Lola on that roof with a gas can and a match. LOLA. HEARTS IN MY EYES.

Mirrored (753 words) by AnonymousChapters: 1/1Fandom:Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)Rating: General AudiencesWarnings: No Archive Warnings ApplyCharacters: Snow White (Snow White and the Huntsman), Ravenna (Snow White and the Huntsman)Additional Tags: IntrospectionSummary: Snow White used to imagine conversions she might have with the Queen.

I love the structure of this one, how the narrative is essentially mirrored and the ways in which Snow White's and Ravenna's thoughts mirror and don't mirror each other; I lovelovelove Snow White's, how a child's hope turns into resentment and then - because Snow White - into curiosity and even the desire to understand, and I love Ravenna's detachedness, strength and self-deception at the same time. UGH SO AWESOME.

I wrote four stories for Yuletide this year, probably because I was so full of nervous energy from signing up that I just couldn't stop with one.

so may the chains fall from your feet (1897 words) by DamkiannaChapters: 1/1Fandom: Dangerous Beauty (1998)Rating: General AudiencesWarning: No Archive Warnings ApplyRelationships: Veronica Franco/Marco VenierCharacters: Veronica Franco, Marco VenierSummary: Stepping out of the Inquisition courthouse brought Veronica to tears. Post-movie: Veronica and Marco, and the things that come after.

My assignment fic! For Shadowcat, who wanted, terrifyingly, "a happy scene" - nothing like my usual epics at all! But I did my best and I think it turned out fairly well; it was definitely a bit tough for me, but I got to rewatch the movie and read all about Veronica Franco, and overall it was a lovely first Yuletide assignment.

And! I would like to re-advertise my gift, plus the extra Madness snippet I received: Sheeana wrote me both the gorgeous 24k Empress of Sand and Water, in which Chani is the Mahdi, Irulan is sent to Arrakis by her father, and they get married and share Paul and save the universe; and the much shorter but equally lovely Water-Envy, Chani and Irulan by the ocean. I am just overwhelmed with joy, they are fantastic stories and there is even a chance of a sequel! ♥.♥ I CAN'T. THE HAPPIEST BEARS.

And now to bed; I was up until about 3 a.m. washing New Year's dishes and woke much earlier than I would have liked today, so I am totally exhausted in the best way.

Today has been a whirlwind of awesome and I've spent half of it asleep - I haven't had a chance to delve properly into the Yuletide archive, but I have had the chance to read my gift:

Empress of Sand and Water (24166 words) by AnonymousChapters: 1/1Fandom: Dune Series - Frank HerbertRating: Teen And Up AudiencesWarning: Author Chose Not To Use Archive WarningsRelationships: Paul Atreides/Chani/Irulan CorrinoCharacters: Irulan Corrino, Paul Atreides, ChaniSummary: After the Harkonnen attack on the Atreides, Irulan is sent to Arrakis to represent the emperor's interests. She hears about this mysterious figure, this Fremen messiah, this Mahdi - and she wonders if this might be the turning point of everything. Canon-divergent AU of Dune.

IT IS THE MOST AMAZING FIC IN THE WORLD AND I LOVE IT. For the first Yuletide gift I will ever receive, this is the most tremendous and beautiful and fantastic story in the world; it is exactly what I wanted and someone wrote it for me and it's just. I CAN'T. ♥ If you are at all a Dune fan I urge you to give it a look (a long look, IT IS 24K WORDS), it is Irulan and Chani and Paul and things are the same but different and Chani is the Mahdi and it's PERFECT.

So! I utterly failed at More Joy Day, but the weather didn't - even if it's raining today, it SNOWED yesterday, all is forgiven - and idriya didn't, either! I am in awe of her persistence; it has been over a year since I accidentally wrote almost 20k about the vanished mothers of A:tLA, and she steadily produced portraits for every single woman!

:D :D :D :D :D Flying Blossoms was actually kind of difficult for me to write, because what it basically amounts to is TINY TINY pieces of a couple dozen AUs and backstory fics, and so if I had not had idriya to talk me down, they would each have been 200k and none of them would be finished. /o\ But she rewarded me, as always, with some really gorgeous artwork. ♥♥♥♥♥

Yay birthday yay! Thank you again to ilthit, and idriya gave me a present that is a present to the whole internets! I present: A:tLA icons liek whoa! HEARTS FOREVER. (Of course I immediately uploaded them all. :D)

And the TV is fixed! \o/ So I caught The Closer and Rizzoli & Isles, about which I have no deep thoughts except UGH I LOVE CAPTAIN RAYDOR SO MUCH and R&I made me cry a little even though the pacing was kind of weird for me. (I think I'm a little too used to L&O.) My dad got me five Errol Flynn movies (five!), and my mother got me a new skirt, and idriya got me AWESOME and ugh. What a fabulous birthday! My heart.

Setting this up was actually a really relaxing way to spend the day - sunk deep in fannish joy, composing a giant wall of text about a character I love. \o/

And, uh, not kidding about the wall of text thing; this is a herd of teal dear if all you're looking for is picspam. If you want a summary of basically every second Irulan's onscreen in the first miniseries, though, you are in the right place. I got a little carried away. /o\

This only covers Irulan's role in Dune (2000), not Children of Dune (2003), because I didn't have quite that much free time today. I did have to shovel the porch, after all. (And help the plow guy get out of a snowbank, which, that is an impressive snowstorm right there if it can get the plow guy stuck.) Also, I took the caps myself, so they are not super high quality, and some of them look a little odd because I lightened them up, that kind of thing. Hopefully they're still sort of okay.

I forget to mention that UVM's adorable awesomeness extends to its official ResLife surveys. There was one sent around just the other week that had, as options to choose when selecting a gender identification (verbatim): "male", "female", "transsexual (male to female)", "transsexual (female to male)", "genderqueer", and "self-identify as:", with a blank to fill in. The instructions? "Check all that apply." ♥.

Also, for my own future reference when attempting to explain asexuality: my personal experience can't be described much better than this.

I've been exercising for the past three days - not hard, just a half-hour's worth of stretches and things that I remember from circus camp. I've been gaining a little weight, thanks to my ridiculously sedentary lifestyle and the ruinous availability of potato chips at college. I'll take it over the sudden and unsettling weight loss freshman year, when I was tired, homesick, not eating regularly, and then suddenly able to take my jeans off without undoing the fly; but I figured it couldn't hurt to at least slow it down a bit, and maybe get somewhere near as stretchy as I used to be.

Anyway. It's been very pleasant. At school, I rarely do anything that involves physical exertion except sprinting from Cross-Cultural Communication to Cognition and Language; and certainly nothing that involves enjoying ... well, the physicality of it, for lack of a better word. Sometimes I leave early for Bio, and walk slow in the wind with my hair down and just look at the morning sky; but that's not quite the same thing. And it actually surprised me a little, how nice it was to just concentrate on what it felt like to move; to delight in the soreness, because it's the good kind that means I'm getting somewhere, if slowly. It's a good feeling. If only working on my thesis felt as good. :D

Two exams in the last week; neither of them were all that taxing, but I was pretty sure they wouldn't be. Not that I didn't study for them anyway, of course, even if it was kind of tedious. Especially the stuff for Bio, my god. :P I learned about ionic and covalent bonds in, like, middle school.

The past two classes of Cross-Cultural Communication, we've been watching Where the Spirit Lives, which was very satisfying in some ways and a little disappointing in others. (Today's title lyric comes from the end credits song, I'm Going Home, by the lovely Buffy Sainte-Marie.) Initially, I thought the movie was going to be entirely from the point of view of Ashtohkomi. ( I was half right. )

Anyway. It was good, and Michelle St. John was brilliant, and I'm glad I watched it; but I think there were some ways that it could have been better.

At least The Daily Show's been good lately. That Moment of Zen with the lady talking about sex ed, and sounding so aghast about the idea of people explaining to kids that masturbation feels good? ... I lol'd.

It's not even actually all that hugely convoluted a story; AT is Catholic, and I asked her if I might go to mass with her at some point, in pursuit of a ritual to write about for Human Cultures. She said yes, and added that I should come with her to choir, because they need people and I sing (not especially well, but reasonably on tune - and, bonus, audibly, as long as I am surrounded by other people who are also singing). So ... I did.

The mass was really interesting to watch. I've only really been to two kinds of services: Unitarian Universalist, with my dad, which I mostly went to for the brownies that came after the actual service was over, and which was ... pretty much nothing like a Roman Catholic mass, and Quaker, which was even less like a mass. A Quaker meeting is, like, an anti-mass, as far as level of organization and ritual goes. And one of the most interesting parts was how much of it my mother remembered as I was telling her about it on the phone today (it's her birthday, so I made sure to call). She went to Catholic school when she was younger, but has kind of lapsed since.

In conclusion: I think I'm going to stick with it. I hadn't realized how much I missed singing in a group, learning new music and practicing it and being taught to sing it well. \o/

Outside of the Davis Center on the UVM campus, there are three flagpoles. The first flagpole always has the American flag; the second flagpole always has the Vermont flag. But the third flagpole changes all the time: on Earth Day (and also just randomly) there is a flag with a picture of the earth on it; around Diwali, they put up the Indian national flag; near Chinese New Year, it's a Chinese flag. Today, it was the rainbow flag, which gets put up for national events (like Coming Out Week, for example) and for smaller, UVM-only things - this time, it's an all-day multiple-speaker event, "Faithful Narratives", which I'm fairly certain was organized by UVM's LGBTQA Services office.

Sometimes, I really, really love this school.

Ahem. Anyway: Babel passage! \o/ It is going to be so nice to have a place like this to store this stuff, especially one that's so taggable. Sometimes I drift off into daydreams where my music is taggable, and I can listen to it by picking whichever tag I feel like hearing, instead of having to construct different playlists for everything. trufax.

And so on. Glossing is so much fun, but, man, what an enormous time sink. ^^ I always forget just how much of one it is until I'm doing it.

So, a check mark for that. I think I'll hold off on Psalm 23 until I've finished the other one, too. Now I just need to shower and get some writing done, and today will actually have been good for something. :D

(I feel so sad tagging this as Conlang A. I really need to give this a proper, in-language name.)

So, Human Cultures this morning was AWESOME. I was expecting it to be at least decent, since I didn't get the professor that my suitemate last year hated, but it was even cooler than I could have hoped.

The professor was awesome; he did tend to ramble a little bit, but he was funny, and he has kind of an interesting outlook on what exactly it means to be an anthropologist. And then he showed us the fantastic and wonderful BabaKiueria, which I daresay I would not have understood nearly as well a year or two ago.

And then I had breakfast, by which I mean I bought an egg-and-cheese breakfast sandwich from Alice's, and came back to the room to finish decorating my desk and unpack a few more things. I also took a really nice nap. :D

Tomorrow should be fun - I'm planning to go to Audiology in the morning even though I'm not actually registered for it so that I can maybe have a chance of squeezing into the class (which is already overfull, if the registration website is to be believed). \o/